Can Non-Catholics Be Saved?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign Bishop Robert Barron made a short video recently in which that made a number of questionable claims about the salvation of non Catholics. We'll look more in depth about what the Church actually teaches about the eternal destination of those who are not part of the Catholic Church. Hello. Eric Sammons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Welcome to the program. I just want to encourage people to subscribe to Channel Smash. That like button, do all the things you're supposed to do to let the algorithm know the all my algorithm know. Hey, it was an interesting program, so go ahead and listen to it. Okay. So also thanks. For those who are joining us live in the live chat, feel free to make your questions, comments and we'll try to pick a few at the end for me to address or put up on the screen. I appreciate when you do that. I love the people who join us on the live chat each week and really do appreciate that. Okay, so Bishop Barron put up a video on X, I think it was yesterday, May Day before, in which he's responding to somebody. I'm going to play the video here in a second. And the subject is the salvation basically of non Catholics. Can non Catholics be saved? Now, this is an issue that is a big deal for me. In fact, it's such a big deal, I literally wrote a book about it, Deadly Indifference, my last book before Moral Money. It came out about four years ago and it was. And really, it just goes in depth. So the truth is you should just buy this book. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Buy Deadly Indifference if you really want to understand this issue. But I wanted to cover some of the topics I mentioned in On X. I didn't think that Bishop Baron did a good job in that video, but I didn't really detail why. And of course people are like, oh, how could. Could you do better? And you know, they were not happy about it. And the truth is this is not a Bishop Baron bashing session. I just wrote an article just a few weeks ago in appreciation of Bishop Baron. I think he does a lot of good things. I think he's probably one of our. He definitely is one of our best bishops here in America. And the problem though is, is that he is muddled on a few issues. And this is the primary one in which I believe Bishop Barron is muddled on. And I use the word muddled very precisely. I'm not saying he's absolutely wrong. I'm just saying that he's just. He's got some problems that ends up confusing people, ends up leading people to views that are heretical. I'm not saying he's heretical. I'm saying is the way he presents this issue can very easily let somebody believe heretical things about the salvation of non Catholics. Now, I know Bishop Barron, defenders, they're very, they get very defensive. They get very upset when, when anybody dares to criticize him. But here's the thing. I, like I said, I think he's one of our better bishops, but he's out there, he's public, he's saying lots of stuff, and he's putting it out on social media all the time. And so that opens him to public criticism, just like me. I mean, when I put out stuff all the time, I expect people to criticize me. And I understand it. It's fine. That just kind of goes with the, with the program. And so him being the, the most out there bishop of all of our bishops, I think it's fine. It's right. And just so to speak, because we know that other bishops won't say anything, most priests won't say anything. I think it's okay for lay people sometimes to say, hold on a second, you're really good on a lot of things, but this thing you're not very good at. Because what happens is because he's good on so many things, people then want to just simply follow every word he says. They simply want to just say, okay, he must be around this because he's right on so much else. But I would say when it comes to the question of the salvation of non Catholics, I really think that Bishop Barron presents a very confusing message and in fact, one that undermines the true teaching of the Church. Okay, so without any further ado, let me just play the video here. Hopefully you won't have any problem seeing or listening to it. And so then we can kind of break it down after that. One true church. I have a problem with that. [00:04:17] Speaker B: Yet a lot of people do it. It annoys people who think that it means, you know, we're right, everybody else is wrong. But that really isn't the Catholic view. We would say that the Catholic Church has the fullness of truth. We have all the gifts that Christ wanted to give his people. Doesn't mean for a second there aren't we many other gifts. They're distributed all over the place in other Christian religions, in the Jewish religion, in the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist religion. So Vatican ii, for example, said that non Christians can be saved. Even atheists of goodwill can be saved. Someone who's following his or her Conscience sincerely and honestly can be saved. Now, it doesn't mean, well, aren't we all the same? Now it means the Catholic Church has the fullness of what God wanted to reveal to his people. But there are participations in this truth all over the place. It's not simply right and wrong. It's fullness versus varying degrees of participation. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So first, I just want to give kind of a general reaction to it before I break down some of the things he said and why I think they are misleading, perhaps is the best word. I just. I don't like. This is a style issue, and I will say upfront a style issue. I don't like the fact that. That all of our bishop, almost all of our bishops, and almost all of our priests, they're very apologetic when it comes to the teaching of the Church, that the Church is the one true church, and outside the Church, there's no salvation. I don't mean apologetics. Apologetic like apologetics like Catholic answers, something like that. I mean apologetic like they're actually, sorry, that's our teaching, and they want to dismiss or downplay it as much as possible because they know it's offensive to many ears. Now, here's the thing. I'm not saying we should be obnoxious. I'm not saying we shove the teaching down people's throat. If somebody says, hey, I'm not really comfortable with the fact that the Church says it's the one true Church. It's not like we say, well, tough luck, jerk face. You need to accept that or you're going to hell. I'm not saying that's what we should say. What I am saying, though, is we should not be. We should not backtrack immediately. Like, our first response when somebody brings up the church's teaching of outside the church's and of salvation should simply be that, yes, that is the Church's teaching. That is what we believe, and it's a very important teaching of the Church. We believe it is vital for every soul to be a member of the Catholic Church, a visible member of the Catholic Church, in order that they might be saved. I think you have to always lead with that. And I never see Bishop Barron lead with that, and I never see any bishop. I mean, the truth is, Bishop Barron's actually better than a lot of bishops on this, but they don't lead with that. And I really feel like that's what we need to lead with. If you look at bishops and priests, time immemorial for the past 2,000 years, that's how our great evangelists led. They made sure that was very clear that you needed to be Catholic. They didn't lead with, well, I know people are offended by that, but really what it really means is. And then you go on to basically explain it away, the great evangelists of the past 2,000 years, they would lead with the fact that you need to be Catholic, you need to be baptized, you need to become Catholic in order to be saved. They would lead with that. If at some point the discussions got more specific, like more theological, more minute. Yes, you might then start talking about some of the exceptions, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But the point is, it's like you proclaim the truth about the fact that the Catholic Church is the one true church, that it is the one means of salvation. And in fact, if you look at the history of these exceptions, so to speak, they were always done at a very high theological level. They weren't for the masses. They weren't for, like, evangelists actually out there, missionaries out there on the streets of, like, foreign countries or anything like that. They were debates, academic debates between people at universities and maybe at the Vatican, things like that, to discuss, okay, what is the possibility of salvation for somebody who is not Catholic. But when you're talking like a man on the street, like Bishop Barron is doing right here in this video, you don't lead with all the exceptions. In fact, I don't think you necessarily have to even bring up the exceptions all the time. If they push you, sure. But in the public eye, it should be much more. Let's go ahead and emphasize the truth of the faith. Now, I'm not saying what Bishop Barron is saying is, you know, blasphemy, or if it's. Or it's like heresy and like that. In fact, I actually created a chart that I love, charts that I put in my book, Deadly Indifference that breaks down kind of the spectrum. I call it the salvation spectrum. I'll put up on the screen here for those who are watching. And basically, this is from my book, Deadly Indifference. Basically, it's kind of the. The. The. The spectrum of what people believe regarding whether or not you're to be Catholic, to be saved. And on the one end is the absolutist, and the other is the universalist. And in there, you see a gray box called within Catholic teaching. And it basically means if you're within this box, you're not a heretic. But it doesn't mean they're all the same. In fact, the absolutist, I Just want to note that the people who say only baptized Catholics can be saved, that that's outside of church teaching. That's actually just not true. But within Catholic Church teaching, you have what I call the exclusivist and the inclusivist views. The exclusivist, somebody like Bishop Athens Schneider would fall under this. I fall under this because people like that do, but I fall under as well. It highlights the ordinary means of salvation while acknowledging the extraordinary means, meaning the ordinary means of salvation is be baptized a Catholic. There are extraordinary means, but that's acknowledged as true, but it's not emphasized. It's not led with the inclusivist viewpoint, which is this is where Bishop Barron would fall under. In fact, I would probably call him an expansive inclusivist. You emphasize more and more the extraordinary means of salvation. I called this in my book the emphasis shift, that if you look at the history of the church, primarily people were exclusivists. That's what they talked about. And they've become inclusivists. And then some have gone off the reservation completely, and now they're pluralist or universalist, meaning they believe many religions can save you or everybody's going to be saved. Now, Bishop Barron does not fall under that. He would fall under an expansive inclusivist view on this spectrum. Read the book for more details on this. But the point is, is that it's a matter of emphasis more than anything else within Catholic teaching. Do you emphasize the ordinary means or do you emphasize the extraordinary means, which is baptism by blood, which nobody denies that really, except for the absolutist, and baptism by desire, including implicit desire. And that's where. That's the loophole you can drive a truck through these days. So let me go now. And so that just in general, I just. That's kind of. My general point is. And that's one of the main points of my book is I'm not saying people like Bishop Baron or Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul II were heretics when it came to the teaching on salvation. My point is their emphasis was so much on the extraordinary means of salvation. Again, ordinary means is baptism, water, baptism. Extraordinary means is baptism by blood, which is very rare. And the other one is baptism by desire, which is the one that everybody kind of drives, you know, like I said, a truck through that loophole these days. And so the emphasis should be on the ordinary means. But so many Catholics, including most Catholic leaders, they emphasize the. The. The extraordinary means of salvation. So let's just break down a few things that Bishop Barron Said one of the things he said, you know, when, when he was asked about one true church. I don't like that. And he said, oh, yeah, I understand that people think it means we're right and everyone else is wrong. You know, like I said, you need to defend the truth of the statement that the church is the one true church before you kind of talk about what people's feelings are about it. Just because someone doesn't like the statement doesn't mean we should be on the defensive immediately. I know I do this sometimes in practice myself, and so I acknowledge that. But if somebody came up to me and said, I don't like it that the Catholics say that the church is the one true faith, the one true religion, I don't think our immediate thing is like, oh, yeah, I understand, because it means makes people think that we're right and you're wrong. No, start off with like, we really do believe that. We really do believe that the Catholic Church is the one true faith. Now let me explain why we believe that. Then you start to explain what we believe about Jesus, what he taught, how he founded a church, that the church historically has always been the Catholic Church, and that, you know, that means we are the one true church. I mean, depends on who you're talking to. If it's an agnostic or atheist, you got to go way back to, you know, God and things like that. If it's a fellow Christian, for example, a Protestant, you start with Jesus. If it's orthodox thing, you're going to start with more of a already acknowledging Jesus and apostle, apostolic succession, stuff like that. The point is, though, don't lead with explaining it away and trying to say, well, I understand your feelings. Lead with, yes. And you can say this without being a jerk. You can say this. I understand why you feel like that. But let me explain to you why we do teach that. Why the Catholic Church says it is the one true religion. Let me talk about that and make it clear that it's not that we're saying we're right. I'm right and you're wrong because I'm smarter than you or I'm holier than you. It's more a matter of saying that the Catholic Church is right because Jesus Christ gave her her teachings and he is always right. And we believe that Jesus Christ said that the Catholic Church is the one true faith. So it's not a matter of arrogance. You don't come about it with like an attitude of like, oh, yeah, I am right, you're wrong because I'm Smart. You're dumb. I'm holy. You're a sinner. No, it's a matter of. The Catholic Church says this. I just happen to agree with it, by the grace of God. I didn't come up with this. I didn't come up with the idea that the Catholic Church is the one true faith. I simply accept it. So then he goes on. Bishop Barron goes on to say, as we heard, he says, you know, that. That God, you know, gave all the gifts to the Catholic Church. But no, it doesn't mean there aren't other gifts distributed all over the place. I just feel like this is too flippant. I understand where he gets this from, and it's not. It's not completely. I mean, most of the stuff he says isn't false as much as misleading. It leads to false beliefs. So this goes all the way back, you know, Justin Martyr, back in the second century, he talked about the seeds of the Logos. And what he meant by that was that obviously God revealed himself to ancient Israel, to the Jews, and that is where his primary revelation came. However, he revealed truths about himself in a certain way in seed form in other places. For example, the Greek philosophers, for example, were a case of the seeds of the Logos, seeds of the word meaning certain truths that they had. So I know this is where Bishop Barron is kind of basing this idea of saying gifts distribute all over the place. The problem, like I said, is it's too casual, and it doesn't. And you have to understand where people are coming from. They're coming from the idea that all religions are equal. So if you say that simply, okay, I'm just going to say that there's gifts all over the place. Yeah, we have the fullness of the gifts, but there's gifts all over the place. It's just too cavalier, too casual. Because what it does is it doesn't mention at all. And he never mentions in this video or almost ever the real falsehoods and errors of other religions. So, yes, let's just use the example of Islam. Islam has certain beliefs that are objectively true. It believes there is one God that is objectively true. There is one God. They believe in the importance of prayer and fasting, for example. And that is true. It's important that we pray and fast. So it's not saying, you know, every single thing that Islam teaches is false, but there are a lot of things that Islam teaches that is false. It's a false religion that leads people astray, leads people away from the one true triune God, that's just a fact. I'm not saying there aren't Muslims who, in practicing their faith, don't become better people, quote unquote, and that God couldn't use them, use that to eventually lead them to Catholicism. That is true. But their faith does not save them. No faith, except for faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, saves anybody. And so just simply saying that there's gifts all over the place, it really just. It furthers this idea of all religions are equal. Yeah, the Catholics think they're a little better than everybody else, but other than that, they're all the same. They all will lead to heaven. And I think that's a real problem is, and this is the problem with the ecumenical movement in general is we simply never acknowledge, we never say we think you're wrong. Like, I have no problem if a Jew or a Muslim or Protestant, whoever comes up and says, I think Catholic Church is wrong about acts. I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. I don't have a problem with that. But we're deathly afraid. We're terrified of ever saying, you know, guess what? The Jews are wrong. They rejected Jesus Christ. You know, the Muslims are wrong. They rejected the triune God and they made up false prophets and all this stuff. The Hindus are wrong. The Buddhists are wrong. The atheists are wrong. They're just wrong. And here's why. Here's their errors. And these errors are very serious, and they can lead to hell. Because the fact is, is that all religions other than Christianity have more errors than they do truth. That's just a reality. I mean, the heirs, I should say, dominate. And they're more important in the sense that they. They influence the religion more than the truth does. So I. I just don't. I don't like that phrasing of just kind of casually saying. Doesn't mean there aren't gifts just distributed all over the place. Then he says what I thought was one of the worst things in there, where he says, vatican II said that non Christians can be saved. It just. And then he goes on to talk about that, about conscience, and I'll talk about that in a second. But here's the thing. First of all, it's just not true. Not the way he flatly states it, to say that simply, Vatican II said that non Christians can be saved. First of all, he kind of presents it like it's a new teaching. Like, yeah, back in the day we said that non Catholics can't be saved. But Vatican II made it very clear, no Non Catholics can be saved. The truth is, though, and I think Bishop Barron knows all this, by the way, is that the teaching of these exceptions, the baptism by blood, baptism by desire, go way back before Vatican ii. I mean, it goes back before Thomas Aquinas talks about the desire implicit desires Pope Pius IX in the. In the 19th century. He talks about invincible ignorance and the possibility of salvation for somebody with invincible ignorance. So by stating, like Vatican, the way he says it, Vatican II said that non Christians can be saved. It's kind of like, well, yeah, back in the day we didn't think that, but now we do. And to say it so flatly is not true. Now it is true that Vatican II didn't. Did kind of lead people to believe that it's okay that you're not Catholic. I mean, let's just. Let's just be honest. The way Vatican II is written, the Decree on Ecumenism Utopia did not. Oh, my gosh, I'm stumbling on the name. I've literally written reports and books about this, literally. And I'm like getting the name wrong. Let me just. Wow. You know which one I mean? The Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis. Any starts with an R. Okay, I'm getting old. The point is, is that, yeah, there's a lot of language in Vatican 2 that it does not talk about non Catholic. It talks about the importance of dialoguing with non Catholics instead of converting them. That's one of the major criticisms I have of Vatican ii. I'm not saying it's heretical to say that. I'm just simply saying your emphasis really leads to heresy. And in fact, a lot of heretics ran with Vatican II because they knew they could because of the emphasis. You see this very clearly in the degree ecumenism. There is all this talk about dialoguing with non Catholics. Now, remember before John Paul. I'm sorry, sorry. Before John xxiii, who is the Pope who called Vatican ii the church basically condemned ecumenism. They didn't practice. They didn't want anybody else practicing it. They wanted. Not they. They can. They. They banned. They forbid Catholics to. To participate in the ecumenical movement. Then it started opening up in the 50s, and then by back in two, it's completely embrace. And I'm not saying there's no good that's come out of ecumenical movement. But this idea that our primary duty is to dialogue. I mean, Paul vi, Pope Paul VI in his. In. In his encyclical, I think it was an apostolic letter, Ecclesium Suam, which came out during Vatican ii. It's not part of Vatican ii. It came out during it. He makes a big deal that dialogue is the way the future. We don't proclaim as much as we dialogue now. He didn't say we don't proclaim, but essentially that's in practice. What happened so with. With Bishop Barron saying, like Vatican II said that non Christians can be saved. It just leads to a very. It leads to a reasonable person thinking, oh, Vatican II changed church teaching and now Catholics don't think that they're the only true religion. I'm sorry, that's a reasonable assumption to make from what Bishop Barron said. Even if he doesn't believe that, that's an assumption made by his casual vacant who said that non Christians can be saved. Then he follows this up by talking about conscience and the role of conscience. The assumption someone following their conscience sincerely and honestly can be saved. Now, I know he's saying can and can does not mean the same as will. And so I grant him that. And as good, he's not saying will be saved. But again, this is too casual. This is too flippant. This is too just too misleading because it sounds like as long as I listen to my conscience, I can be saved. That's all it would take. But we know that's not true. Bishop Baron knows that's not true. Because your conscience obviously can be malformed. And most people, let's be honest, most people today, their conscience is extremely malformed. Even most Catholics, I would argue, probably it's extremely malformed. And so by just saying, hey, if you follow your conscience, you can be saved. That's how people will hear it. You can be saved. Meaning, yeah, you will be saved. You have to be precise when you're talking about these issues. And you have to make sure, though, more than just being precise in your language, you have to make sure you're emphasizing the truth, the important truths, the most. Is it true that somebody in theory could follow their conscience, not be a member of the Catholic Church and be saved? Yes, that is true. The Church has taught that. But that is such a. That is not something anybody can count on. If anybody thinks that their conscience will be saved, it will save them. They are almost definitely doomed for damnation. That's just the reality of it. We just cannot count on our conscience alone and act like that's. Or count on the conscience of others alone, like, well, their conscience could save them. No, we don't even bring that up unless they ask us specifically the role of conscience. And we make sure it's clear this is a possibility, a remote possibility. And yes, it is possible, but don't count on that. You need to be baptized, brother. That's what we really need to be leading with. Not this idea of like, okay, it's just like, yeah, it's possible. Again, what Bishop Barron is doing is he's taking these kind of theological academic debates from the past and oh, I see Bishop Baron doing it. They're all doing it. All the bishops are doing it worse than he is. And Vatican II really is doing it in a lot of ways. And definitely the people after Vatican ii, the spirit of Akintu did this. They're taking these like basically possibilities and they're making them probabilities and even certainties. That's essentially what's happening. For 1800, 1900 years, the church always led with, you need to become Catholic, you need to become Catholic. You need to become Catholic now. You need to repent, believe in the gospel, be Catholic, and you will be saved. And if you don't do that, we can't speak about what's going to happen to you. We're not gonna like lead you on to think it's not vitally important you become Catholic. Yes, it is possible, but we're not bringing that up, at least not in a conversation with just some guy on in the office like that, that video looked like. And then of course he, he very much, Bishop Baron, that is, he very much emphasizes like the idea of the church has the fullness and everybody else has varying degrees of participation. The problem is there's no clear cut line drawn between how much participation is needed to be saved. Because the way it sounds like, I think on a. Just a very average, again, reasonable reading of what he said is simply, oh, everybody's participating in the truth. So we're all going to be where the truth leads us, which is heaven. But ultimately there's a very clear line between Catholicism and everybody else. If you're on the right side of the Catholicism line, that is how our Lord told us that you can be saved if you're on the wrong side. Yes, you might believe a lot of true things. You might participate in the truth in a lot of ways. That does not necessarily mean you will participate eternally with the triune God. Because how do we know that? Like, okay, I mean, the truth is a serial killer participates in some level of truth. I'm willing to bet, I guarantee there's been serial killers who believed in God. By believing in God, they participate in the truth. They might even be following their conscience as they believe it to be. In fact, most people, when they act, they believe it to be the right thing to do. But we know, of course it's highly immoral, might be even insanity. But the point is it's not going to save you. It's just by generically saying your conscience can save you and that we have this fullness versus varying degrees of participation. It makes it like Catholicism gets 100% grade. Orthodoxy gets like a 98%, Protestantism gets a 95%. Maybe Judaism gets a 90%, Islam gets an 85%, Hinduism gets an 80%. I mean, everybody's passing though, right? If the cutoff is 60% and above you, you get to heaven. Everything else below gets to hell. Well, that's what it sounds like. I don't think it's unreasonable. I don't think I'm like reading into what he is saying, by the way. I'm not saying he believes like this 100%, 85% like that. I don't think he does. But I think it's reasonable to come walk away from that conclusion with that conclusion from what he said. So that's kind of. My biggest issue is, yes, you can parse what, and I saw people do this on X. You can, you can parse what Bishop Barron said as a, as orthodox. You can find ways to say yes. If you read, if you say here what it says here. You can look at this, at this line from the catechism. You can look at what Vatican II said here. You can look at even pre Vatican II things, and you can find ways in which it conforms to Catholic teaching. I'm not going to argue that point. My point, however, is the whole presentation leads people to a pluralistic or even universalist view. And we already know Bishop Barron skirts with universalism with his embrace of von Balthazar and his dare we hope that all men be saved, which he publicly basically endorses. So, and I'm not universalism, but it flirts with it. It's like asking it out on a date, potentially. It's not necessarily married to it, but it's kind of interesting. Again, I want to pull up this salvation spectrum on the far left side on the screen. It's absolutist. Only baptized Catholics and be saved. That's outside church teaching. On the far right, you have pluralist and universalists. Either multiple religions can save people or all will be saved. They're at outside church teaching. The danger of the exclusivist like me is I go too far and I become an absolutist I fall outside church teaching. So you have to be baptized by water. No exceptions. But the danger of the inclusivist, especially the expansive, inclusive inclusivists like Bishop Barron, is they lead people to pluralism and universalist universalism. Remember, the average person does not have a theology degree. He has not studied Vatican ii. He's probably never read it. He does not know any of these kind of details about that. He would get, by the way, if he read my book Deadly Indifference on sale now. If they don't have all this knowledge. Like, I can hear what he says and I can say, I know where he's getting this from. Like when he talks about the idea that gifts are given all over the world, I know he's getting that from St. Justin Martyr, speeds of the sorry, seeds of the Logos, things like that. But the Irish person doesn't have that ability to do that. They just don't have the education. It's not like I'm smarter than them. It just simply. Or anybody theology degree is smart. It's just we've got the education to understand it. And so I just personally think that a Catholic bishop in particular, when speaking publicly, his language should always be for the common man. It should always be in encouraging people to become Catholic. Listen to that again. That video again. I won't play it again. But if you listen to again, nothing in it really encourages people to become Catholic. Yeah, they have the fullness, but I don't even see what the big sales pitch is of that. And I just think a Catholic bishop is called to be the primary evangelist. I mean, they're literally the successors of who? The apostles. And who are the apostles? Ones who are sent out to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to encourage people to become Catholic, to proclaim. And I just don't see it. I don't see it in what he's saying here, like encouraging people to become Catholics. So it's easy for me to say this. I know that I'm just sitting here, you know, at my desk here, and I. I can criticize people all day long. I know that. But what should be said? I kind of hinted at that. And I just want to say. And actually, you know the funny thing in my book, I have a chapter that I'm talking about Bishop Barron, his. His infamous interview with Ben Shapiro back in 2017, 2018. Ben Shapiro asked, should I become Catholic? And I broke down what I thought because Bishop Baron should have said. And again, it's not a matter of the alternatives are only Bishop Baron being nice or you be a jerk. There's a lot more options than that. You could have gone more universalist, more pluralist than Bishop Baron. You could have gone wrong the other way. Or you could have. You could become an absolute jerk. But there's things in between. Again, the first thing I think you do is you affirm the uniqueness of the Catholic Church. It is the 12 church. We. When he says that, you say, yeah, it is the one. We do believe it's one true church. And I understand. You can follow up very quickly with, I understand why that's offensive to your ears. I get that. Because I do understand. I mean, it does make sense why people today who are educated and they imbibed today and imbibed our culture, our society today, they're going to think they're going to be offended by that. But you say, yes, it is. Then you explain why you believe it really is the one true church. You affirm. Then before you say anything else, you affirm that Jesus Christ made the Catholic Church as the normative way to be saved. It is the only way that we are guaranteed we will be saved. The only way we know. Leave it to God to do whatever he wants with those who are not visible, baptized members of the Catholic Church. But we know Christ told us, you got to be a baptized member of the Catholic Church. So that's what we have to focus on. That's what we have to lead with. If then there is a further discussion, and if then he really the person is pressing and says, but what about, like my grandmother, she died and she wasn't Catholic, what happened to her? Then you can start talking about many things. You can talk about the fact that, for example, we know a baptized Catholic who lives their faith till death is saved. We know this with surety, with moral certainty. We don't know that about anybody else. However, we can hope. We know that God is merciful. We can hope for the salvation of those who died outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church. But it's not for us to speculate at this point. We trust God for those who are alive. We emphasize you need to become Catholic for those who have died outside the Church. We simply trust in God in his mercy, and we trust that when we die, we will know he made the most just decisions possible, that nobody got to heaven, who didn't, who shouldn't have gotten heaven, and nobody goes to hell who doesn't deserve it. That's just simply the way it is. So again, I'm going to wrap it up here, but again, Deadly Indifference is the book I wrote about this. I came out, I think, four or five, four years ago now. And, you know, I will say this. It's a book I'm very proud of because I worked on it a lot. Like, like I, I rewrote the book. I wrote the book, and I scrapped the whole thing because I didn't like it. I basically rewrote it from scratch. It was the one I worked on the hardest. No question about it. My book, Moral Money, that just, that just came out on bitcoin. That one was my book I, I wrote the easiest because I had studied it for so long, and I really knew, I felt like I knew what I wanted to say. Deadly Indifference. I, it was, it was a struggle to know what is it that I wanted to say. How did I want to say? Because I did want to go out and call, like, somebody like Pope Benedict or Bishop Baron a heretic, because I don't think that's true. But I wanted to emphasize why I still think what they, what they, you know, somebody like Bishop Baron says is still. Can be dangerous and can be misleading. So I really worked on that, you know, on that. I can't remember what, what the point of that, but anyway. Oh, my point is I was disappointed how it sell. Sold. I mean, it's been out four years now. I'm not gonna, like, you know, act like something it didn't sell as well as I wanted it to. And I get that. I mean, I, I, I'm disappointed by get that. It, it's, it's a little more in the weeds. It's a little more like, okay, let's get into a topic really in depth. And I know in our current culture that's. People don't want to do that. But anyway, I, I thought, I'm very proud of the book, but that goes without saying because I wrote it. Okay, so let me go ahead and look at some of the live chat again. Appreciate it. Howdy from Texas. Danny boy. Howdy, Texas. You're doing good stuff down there as always. You know, I just saw that. I think you guys just did a bitcoin strategic reserve for the government of Texas. So kudos to you. Consecrated Soul says no sanctifying grace, no salvation. It's that simple. It is that simple. Now, the question of sanctifying grace, how do we receive it? The normative way is water baptism. Are there other ways possible? Yes. But we can't judge that. We can't know that. We can't proclaim that. We have to proclaim the fact that water baptism is the means that we know of for sanctifying grace. Juan says all traditionalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are traditionalists. Bishop Barron encapsulates that this is the whole debate between conservatives and traditionalists, broadly defined in the Catholic Church today, that traditionalists very much are more skeptical of the fruits of Vatican ii. But even some of the language of Vatican ii, I mean, I said it in this, this podcast, that some of the language of Van ii, I think, leads people to false beliefs. And it's true. All traditionals are conservative, but not all conservatives are traditionalists. And Bishop Barron, he would never claim to be a traditionalist. He would say, of course I'm not traditionalized, and he would be more of a conservative. So I get that. Mark says the corner cases of salvation topics like baptism by desire should generally be avoided when talking with non Catholics. There's a lot of nuance and deep theology for those topics. Absolutely. Mark, this is you just in much better than I did in two sentences and capsule. What I've been trying to say this entire podcast is that the corner cases of salvation. I get people are going to ask you about it, but we should be leading, we should be emphasizing. When you're Talking about salvation, 98% of it should be about, you need to be Catholic. If they push you and they really want to know, what about if you're not Catholic? You can talk about those edge cases, those corner cases, and you can make it clear that even in those cases, we can't say, okay, well, that guy's a good Muslim, so he's going to be saved. Or that guy, he, he's really good Protestants, he's going to be saved. We just say, hey, God, we'll leave that up to God. But we know if they became Catholic and we're practicing Catholics, they would be saved. I think that's how we have to treat this issue. That's how we have to deal with it. So, yeah, again, I want to make it clear, probably overemphasizing this. I'm not bashing on Bishop Barron. He does a lot of good work. But I do think his statements on the salvation on Catholics can be misleading to people. They can lead. Lead people to false beliefs. And they really do do a disservice to the evangelization efforts of the church. And considering how much he invests himself in evangelization, that's why I feel like it's unfortunate that he, he does this sometimes. He emphasizes too much the fact that that non Catholics can potentially be saved and he leads with that instead of leading with you need to become Catholic. So and that's the last thing I'll leave with you if you're not Catholic and you're listening to this, God bless you. First of all you got all the way through me talking about you need to be Catholic to be saved. So so I appreciate you listening the whole time but if you are non Catholic I really do want to say please consider joining the Catholic Church. Please be consider converting, becoming Catholic. It really is the best decision you'll ever make. I made it 30 some years ago. I can't encourage it highly enough and I urge you really look into the truth claims of the Catholic Church and come to realize that the Catholic Church is the one true church. And, and when you do that and if you live a good Catholic life you will be saved. And that's just, that's a promise from Jesus Christ. Okay, that's it for now. Until next time everybody. God love you.